Congressional leaders and the President had blocked out about 4-5 hours for meetings tonight on a deal to increase the nation’s debt limit. They broke up after 90, without an agreement.

Instead of being “surprised” by the June (lack of) Jobs Report, it seems the economists were “stunned” by the numbers.

I seriously have better stuff to do, but….

Paul Ryan, the Patron Saint of Austerity, Frugality, Abstemiousness, and Asceticism …. For You, was hanging out with a few of his economist bros at a local eatery, just pounding down some $350 bottles of wine over ultimate nachos and jalapeno poppers, when he was confronted by an economist lady who pointed out that it was kind of unbecoming for a Congressional leader to be living high on the hog when the rest of the country is made up of hobos living on food stamps and shriveled lime peels found in the dumpster behind the Felix Lounge.

Just a few years ago, the national debate over the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, indefinite detention, secret renditions and other legal elements of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror” happened openly in American courtrooms and in the daily newspapers. Increasingly, those debates have receded into the rearview mirror as we content ourselves with the illusion that these issues are no longer urgent, or no longer affect us. In his thoughtful new book, Habeas Corpus After 9/11, Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall University School of Law, reminds us that these and other legal innovations in the War on Terror are neither resolved, nor isolated, nor benign. We are still living in the legal universe that was constructed on the fly after 9/11. We just don’t want to admit it.

Just because John Boehner bugged out of the grand bargain, I wouldn’t say that the safety net has yet been saved by Republican militance over tax cuts for the rich. People didn’t pay attention to the fact that chained CPI, for example, which would throw 245,000 older people into poverty by 2050, was already a feature of the debt limit talks before all this talk of a grand bargain started.

When will the Village stop churning out these “both sides do it” pieces?

Ignorant Democrats can’t counter the stupid economic theories preached by ignorant Republicans.

A decade ago the wise American public told us something important: they believe corruption is so endemic to our political system that unethical acts are no longer illegal.

As long as our leaders talk of virtue and morality, their actual acts are shrugged off as sad by-products of humankind’s fall into sin.

Most Minnesotans who follow politics in the state figured that Bachmann and Associates, the counseling clinic run by Michele Bachmann’s husband Marcus, did professionally-discouraged “ungaying” therapy even though Marcus has denied it for years. Now, thanks to the efforts of The Nation and of Truth Wins Out (h/t to Dump Bachmann), we have proof that they do indeed.

House Speaker John Boehner just announced that he has abandoned the $4 trillion “grand bargain” pushed by President Obama, a day before Congressional leaders were to meet at the White House for a final set of talks. Boehner said that only the medium-term deal, with roughly $2 trillion in deficit reduction, would be palatable to his caucus. This positions Barack Obama to the right of John Boehner on deficit hawkishness, as Boehner blinked because he could not sell the tax increases necessary to ink a large grand bargain.